What is Your daily driver
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| Top Down View |
Motorola has been doing some great things in the laast couple of years. With the more realistic outlook on what a smartphone should be the Moto G was born. The Moto G is the younger brother to the Moto X. It is a more cost attentive device starting out at 179$ USD for 8gb scaling up to 199$ USD for 16gb. This phone is sold unlocked so there is only a one time payment with no lock in to a carrier. This is my daily driver.
Primary Usage
As my daily driver I use the Moto G for everything. I read a lot of articles online so a quick way to combine these news articles in a convenient way is Google+. I spend anywhere from one to three hours a day reading on Google+. For all my work, school and project related affairs Google Drive is the next stop. Having all my information available at any moments notice is always a must have. For the quick things and ideas that so often disappear from memory I use Google Keep. Now some might say Google keep is included in Google Drive but it has its own app which makes it independent. For school work Gmail is always something that must be checked constantly. When you are working with college students who procrastinate have part/full-time jobs and rarely sleep a simple phone call is not enough anymore. A specialized email with all the information, pictures, links and miscellaneous questions are complied in sometimes rudimentary long emails but at least you can scale this information quite easily on this app. Chrome web browsing is always a must have and the last thing that I primarly use is audio streaming. This ranges anywhere from my personal audio and radio through Google Music, random radio at Pandora, or daily news with Pocket Casts.
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| Hardware Buttons |
Phone Basics
Cell phones were made for a primary purpose and that was to make a phone call on the go. I use Simple Mobile as my carrier, an MNVO of T-Mobile. They use T-Mobile's towers and have great signal. The sound quality of a call is okay. I would not call it VOIP clarity or even crystal clear but the person on the other end can understand what you say. The look and feel of this device is simply splendid. The curved back sits ever so nicely in your hand. The weight of the device is heavy enough that it does not feel cheap while being made of plastic, an overall well dressed device. The responsiveness usually has no faults. Multitasking between applications is seamless with the occasional hic-up. The only time the device constantly lags and stutters is when the the remaining storage is lower then 1.9gbs. Right after this threshold is passed the Moto G will freeze stutter ask to force close applications even restart in some instances.
Display
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| Moto G Display |
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The resolution on the Moto G display is 720 X 1280 pixels on a 4.5inch LCD. Even with only a 720 pixel display the blacks and color ratios are decent maybe even great. The vibrancy of the colors may leave a little to be desired but by no means is it bad. Auto brightness is always something that smartphone companies taught as saving battery and being the optimum solution. I find the auto brightness to never really be enough. It is either lacking or to much defeating the whole purpose of the setting. Readability in direct sunlight is another sore spot on this device. When you max out the brightness just to read an email or notification for a quick second sometimes it just is not enough. You are forced to move the device and turn it to get a clear readable angle.
Camera
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| Back Camera Flash Off |
One way costs were kept down was a smaller pixel density camera on the back and front. The back camera is a 5mp sensor and the front 1.3MP. The best way to display a camera's prowess is through evidence.
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| Back Camera Flash Off |
While pictures outside with relatively good lighting allows the back 5mp camera to really shine. When that lighting is removed the pictures always seem to have either a bluish tint or to much noise.
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| Dark Hallway Flash Off |
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| Dark Hallway Flash On |
In the above comparison the flash seems to almost take away from the picture itself degrading color and washing out the picture.
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| Front Camera |
Sound
The sound reproduction on this device is good. The speaker is back facing so the sound is not directed at you. However the speaker is loud enough that it reasonably does not matter what direction the speaker faces because you can hear music quite clearly. While music junkies will find the lack of audio quality fairly easy normals wont have a problem with it.
Battery
The most basic but important part of a smartphone that has eluded manufactures for some time is battery life. Motorola has appeared to have finally fixed this problem with Moto series of devices. With moderate to heavy usage I was easily able to get through a full work day plus some change. On average I was able to get a little under 13 hours of operating time until the phone shut off. The 13 hours is usually comprised of three hours on screen time, three to four hours of Pandora streaming, four hours of a mixture of offline and online streaming of podcasts, and finally about two hours of web browsing and the rest is miscellaneous. So with motorola’s battery technology pushing a 2070mAH battery to new found lengths there is another caveat battery saver. Battery saver is a mode on the device that cuts background data and other outgoing communications on the device further increasing battery life.
The outcome of this device is simply astounding with regards to the price. At 199$ USD the Moto G can easily be used as a daily driver. Android is constantly improving and the core set of Google applications only add more functionality making this device a must buy.
Here is
Engadget's Review of the device.
